Thou’lt be sorry for me, lad, I know that well, but thou hast begun to look forward to the time when thou’lt walk the hills at the head of the flock like another; it is but proper that thou shouldst, and it is but natural that the time should seem long to thee; but take on a little patience, this much I can vouch for, every bone in me was aching when I left the cavern this morning, and my sight is no longer what it was.  Master Jesus, I’d as lief wait; the hills will be naught without thee.  Dost hear me, Master?  Jesus smiled and dropped back into his meditations and from that day onward very little sufficed to remind him that he would end his days in the cenoby reading the Scriptures and interpreting them.  In the cenoby, he said, men do not think, they only read, but in the fields a shepherd need never lose sight of the thought that leads him.  A good shepherd can think while watching his sheep, and as the flock was feeding in good order, he took up the thread of a thought to which he had become attached since his discovery that signs and sounds of God’s presence are never lacking on earth.  As God’s constant companion and confidant he had come to comprehend that the world of nature was a manifestation of the God he knew in himself.  I know myself, he said one day, but I do not know the God which is above, for he seems to be infinite; nor do I know nature, which is beyond me, for that, too, seems to run into infinite, but infinite that is not that of God.  A few moments later it seemed to him he might look upon himself as an islet between two infinities.  But to which was he nearer in eternity?  Ah, if he knew that!  And it was then that a conviction fell upon him that if he remained on the hills he would be able to understand many things that were obscure to him to-day.  It will take about two years, he said, and then many things that are dark will become clear.  Two infinites, God and nature.  At that moment a ewe wandering near some scrub caught his attention.  A wolf, he said, may be lurking there.  I must bring her back; and he put a stone into his sling.  A wolf is lurking there, he continued, else Gorbotha would not stand growling.  Gorbotha, a golden-haired dog, like a wolf in build, stood snuffing the breeze, whilst Thema, his sister, sought her master’s hand.  A moment after the breeze veered, bringing the scent to her, and the two dogs dashed forward into the scrub without finding either wolf or jackal lying in wait.  All the same, he said, a wolf or a jackal must have been lying there, and not long ago, or else the dogs would not have growled and rushed to the onset as they did.

They returned perplexed and anxious to their master, who resumed his meditation, saying to himself that if aching bones obliged him to return to the cenoby he would have to give up thinking.  For one only thinks well in solitude and when one thinks for oneself alone; but in the cenoby the brethren think together.  All the same my life on the hills is not over yet, and an hour later he put his pipes to his lips and led his flock to different hills, for, guided by some subtle sense, he seemed to divine the springing up of new grass; and the shepherds, knowing of this instinct for pasturage, were wont to follow him, and he was often at pains to elude them, for on no hillside is there grass enough for many flocks.